(MAY 13)  Right down to her trademark tye-dye trunks, one of the most unique warriors in women’s boxing went by the nickname “Island Girl.”

Sumya "The Island Girl" Anani - Photo credit: Sue TL Fox

Sumya Anani fought in two of the most memorable fights in the history of women’s boxing. One was a classic for the ages that should have been seen by millions, but instead drew a small crowd and an equally tiny television audience.

The other was memorable for all the wrong reasons.

While people always recall that Katie Dallam was making her pro boxing debut, few recall that Anani was a relative novice in the ring herself when the two met in what otherwise would have been a nondescript night of boxing in a small union hall in St. Joseph’s, Missouri.

"I tried competitive weightlifting, but boxing creates an urgency of self-defense in me. I know that if I can handle this then I can handle anything,” Anani once recalled.

Nondescript, that is, save for the fact that Dallam went unconscious after leaving the ring that night of Dec. 11, 1996, where she had taken a battering for three full two-minute rounds, and part of a fourth. Published accounts of the bout claim Dallam absorbed between 120 and 150 blows in those frightful minutes of mayhem.

Dallam – much bigger than Anani, which prompted the decision to have both fighters wear 14 ounce gloves – had trained for her debut for about six weeks, mostly on weekends, and was in a car accident with her trainer the night before the fight.

“I have no memory of before the fight or after the fight, the only thing I remember about the fight at all is seeing her in the ring coming at me throwing her arms kind of wildly, both arms going, I don’t know how to explain it…like a windmill,” she said in an interview years after the bout, her sister helping her remember words that were frustratingly easy to forget.

Incredibly, ever the warrior, Dallam was ready for another matchup.

“I thought I was in a car wreck or something. I was actually supposed to have another match and I was trying to get out of the hospital bed to go to the other one,” she said. “I kept saying I got to go, I got to go, and they were like, ‘no you can’t box anymore.’ I didn’t want to believe that.”

But she also knew, during her initial recovery, that she had taken a pounding. In intensive care for more than a week, and with weeks additional in hospital rehab, Dallam was inches from death.

“My mother who had died from breast cancer in 1990, it was like I was talking to her and this was when I was in the ICU and everything. I wanted to die and go be with her but she was telling me ‘no, it is not your time’, and I wasn’t happy with that answer,” Dallam added. “I really didn’t want to go back and be in this beat up body that couldn’t walk or talk and couldn’t take care of itself. So she and I are having quite an argument, not that we were really fighting but I was looking away from her. We were like in the clouds and I was not going to accept this decision, but she was very convinced that this was going to be.”

It was just Anani’s fourth bout, but already she had been established as a boxing buzz saw, a physical force that belied her almost diffident, demure, yoga-inspired presence outside the ring.

By her own admission, she was still very much a greenhorn through and through.

"I was scared to death. I was arm-punching," Anani said. "I was fighting on adrenaline and fear. You see animals fighting for their lives. That's what I was like."

Annai held a candlelight vigil at the hospital, and as part of her own recovery therapy, penned a long letter to Dallam, who outweighed Anani by almost 40 pounds, a matchup that obviously should have never happened in the first place.

“I just don’t understand why she was in the ring,” she said. “It’s a question that I continue to ask myself. Whenever it’s brought up, I can tell that I’ve never really let it go,” Anani said many years after.

Predictably, Anani was ready to walk away.

"I was done with boxing after hearing about her," Anani said. "But how do we know what happened? All of us fighters know that it could happen to us. I read that waiver before every fight, and I draw a deepest breath. It says right on there you could be crippled, you could be paralyzed, you could be killed.

"We know this is a violent sport," she continued. "We don't want to go in the ring to hurt someone. It was an unfortunate incident. I left the ring not knowing a thing. When I found out the next night, I started crying."

As a message therapist, and deeply spiritual, the irony of the outcome was at first difficult for Anani to reconcile.

“Hands can hurt, hands can heal,” she has said often in the years since one of the darkest chapters in women’s boxing was written.

[WBAN comments:  These old quotes from newspaper articles from 25 years ago, from the 1990's as anyone knows, as we get older (wiser), we evolve into different people.]

The defining fight of her career – a 10-round decision over Christy Martin in the prime of the Coal Miner’s Daughter career and at the height of her popularity – should have been a springboard to stardom for Anani.

The Dec. 18, 1998 barn burner was every bit the fight Martin had with Deirdre Gogarty two years earlier. which trumpeted the arrival of women’s boxing. The only difference was it lasted 10 rounds, not six, and it was Martin who hit the canvas, not her opponent.

Christy Martin vs. Sumya Anani

"It was absolutely one of the most amazing fights I ever saw," said veteran ringsider Harold Lederman, one of boxing’s most respected judges and broadcasters. “I’ll never see another fight between two women that good in my lifetime.”

He and his wife, Eileen, actually watched the scrap in Ft. Lauderdale the night before he would serve as an analyst on the HBO telecast of a Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Angel Manfredy championship fight in Miami.

"Sumya kept landing big left hands, while Christy tried everything . . . slugging, boxing, and slugging again . . . but couldn't stop Sumya,” Lederman added. “It was so good that after every round, my wife and I stood up and applauded.”

Newspaper accounts reported that Anani “bloodied and battered Martin with devastating combinations to the head and body. Martin left the ring with a bloody nose, swollen right eye and pink trunks covered in crimson.” Martin came in a veteran 38 pro fights, Anani 11. Martin hadn’t lost in almost a decade.

“It wasn't my night. I didn’t feel like I could win even when I got to the arena,” Martin said afterwards. “I’m not taking anything away from her. She’s a good fighter. But it was a head butt that cut me earlier. And when she knocked me down, it was with elbows and arms and wasn't a clean shot.”

Martin had her moments, to be sure, and the fight ended in a majority decision, Anani winning 96-94 on two scorecards with the third judge calling it a draw. When Martin went down, it was ruled a slip, but she was clearly injured and “nearly knocked out” a newspaper account implied. As only few can, Martin came back a round later to have one of her best of the night, rocking Anani with heavy rights.

“I thought for sure it was over when she was on the ropes (in the third),” Anani said. “It’s overwhelming. I’m surprised. I thought I would have to knock her out to get the win. Boy, she hits hard. I paced myself better than she did.”

It was vintage Anani, even though she’d only had a couple of years of fights.

“I didn’t go in there and try to box and try to move, I went after her and I fought her fight. I backed he up ten rounds on the inside, she has never had to fight like that before,” Anani recalled. “She would always go in there and fight on the inside and tear people apart. Maybe she thought she could do that to me, but I went in there and took it to her and I was right there and didn’t run. I beat her up and I beat her in her prime, and I think that is hard for her to accept that loss.”

Few recall that the two were actually signed to the fight a month prior to their Sunshine State slugfest. agreeing to a 12-rounder on Showtime at the Las Vegas Hilton. Anani was just hours from her moment in the spotlight that never really came. Martin refused to fight, citing an unspecified illness.

Lederman was one of the very few to have actually seen the fight when it did happen, which given all its gory glory, is a shame. Anani would easily have become a hot commodity in the sport, and fought for much bigger purses, had it not been for Martin, and maybe Don King, who offered Anani a contract after the performance, a contract Anani turned down.

So instead of the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas as the fight’s backdrop a mere 600 or so fans showed up that December night at the decidedly less glamorous Fort Lauderdale War Memorial Auditorium. The “television” partner was something called U.S. Satellite Broadcasting.

“He offered me something to lock me in my whole boxing career, and I didn’t know back then that you could negotiate,” she said. “I thought you had to take it like it was or don’t take it at all. Also, I didn’t know how good I was even though I just finished beating the poster girl of the sport I had only been boxing for two years. I never had any amateur experience and I really didn’t know how good I was.”

Sumya "Island Girl" Anani inducted in 2016 in the
International Women's Boxing Hall of Fame

Called the “Island Girl” for her love of Jamaica – where she both worked and lived for a short period growing up – Anani finished her career with 25-3-1 mark, and was a member of the 2016 class of the International Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame. Last fall, she was one of 12 women to appear, for the first time ever, on the ballot for the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

Today the owner of Learning2Fly, an aerial, spiritual and fitness center in Mission, Missouri, it was her background in yoga, Anani believes, that paved her way to success in the squared circle.

Sumya Anani with her companion and trainer Barry Becker,
IBA President Dean Chance and team member

"I was so grateful that I started yoga before boxing. It helped me be calm, be focused, learn discipline. It’s the mental aspect that's really draining," she said. "From the time I wake up in the morning on the day of the fight to right after the fight, that's all I'm thinking about The physical aspect, anybody can lift weights and jog five miles. It's the visualization and mental preparation that's so difficult".  When she was actually inducted into the women’s hall in the 2019 ceremony, Anani paid an emotional tribute to her long time companion and trainer, Barry Becker.

“I was 24 years old when I picked up my first pair of boxing gloves. I had never even watched a boxing match,” she recalled. “He told me I could be a world champion in five years. He saw something in me, and that’s the power of a teacher, to see something in someone that they are not able to see themselves.”

And although boxing is the ultimate individual challenge, Anani started and ended her speech recognizing the irony in that too.

“I started with a quote by Maya Angelo, that I come as one but I stand as 10,000. When I think of all the people that helped me get there – my workout partners, my sparring partners, my massage therapist, my yoga teacher – it’s been humbling and honoring to stand there, but there were 10,000 people behind me,” she added.